Podcast

Graduating from a top MBA program can mean a higher salary, wider name recognition, and greater career opportunities. Doors open and you have a certain level of pre-existing credibility. That's also why top schools are tough to get into; everyone wants it. If you're reaching for a top MBA program, we have 10 great tips on getting you in. On our show are two admissions directors from top MBA programs and an admission’s consultant.

Guests Include:

Isser Gallogly, executive director of MBA admissions, NYU Stern

Jim Holmen, director of admissions, Kelley School of Business at Indiana University

Alex Chu, founder of MBA Apply

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Welcome to MBA Podcaster, the only broadcast source for cutting edge information and advice on the MBA application process. I’m Janet Nakano. Going to a top MBA program can mean higher salaries, wider name recognition and greater job opportunities. That’s also why they’re tough to get into. If you’re reaching for a top MBA program, we have 10 great tips on getting you in, from the ones that let you in. On our shows are admissions directors from NYU Stern and the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, as well as an admissions consultant from MBA Apply.

Business school applications force you to be introspective and while you’re trying to present yourself in the best light possible make sure you stay true to yourself. That’s tip #1: speak from the heart. Isser Gallogly is Executive Director of MBA Admissions at NYU Stern, “When you’re very genuine in your essays, when you write what you feel and who you are and what you’re about and what you’re passionate about, what you’re excited about, you stand out. I think those are the essays that really when you’re reading them, excite you as an admissions person, make you want to read more. Because when you can tell this person knows who they are, knows what they’re about, has done their homework, and is really excited about this. The passion is what makes you stand out and the passion cannot be faked. The passion has to be genuine; it has to be something that comes from within you.”

Alex Chu is Founder of MBA Apply and is a Wharton alumnist, he says being yourself is key, “It’s just like anything in life where you know if you’re interviewing for a job, they’re hiring the person not the resume or just like you know when you’re meeting somebody in real life that you met for the first time, an acquaintance or whether casually or for business the kinds of people that really stick out in your mind, that really stick in your head are people who are themselves because they’re very comfortable with themselves. The people who tend to kind of disappear in your memory are people who tend to be very overly self conscience, or overly careful, or overly contrived because they’re not really revealing anything about who they are. As people we like to connect with other people. Your job as an applicant is really to be able to reveal yourself in that way because that is what people will remember. They may not necessarily remember what your GMAT score is but they will remember certain things about you that you reveal about yourself in your essay or in your interviews.”

The GMAT is the necessary evil when applying to business school. At the very top schools the average score is around 700 or higher but simply scoring high isn’t the point. So tip #2 is know what the GMAT score means. Again Isser Gallogly, “The GMAT, it’s a lot of things. I’ll say what it’s not, it’s not an IQ score, all it tells you is there a correlation between how you do on the GMAT score and how you will do academically in your core classes, in your first year. It’s just a correlation, it’s a good correlation. So all it tells me is how is this person going to fare academically in their first year. It’s just one point of data. We take that into account but we’re looking for more than just someone who is going to be a good student, we’re looking for someone who is going to be a good professional, a good fit in the community, has great personal and professional characteristics, I mean you’re looking for a lot more than a GMAT score. So if you have a high GMAT it’s one piece of evidence that you might do well in the academic portion. It’s nice to have but it certainly isn’t everything. There are plenty of people with 780s, 800s who aren’t admitted frankly. And there are people with scores that are on the low end of our range that are admitted. Again, the GMAT is there to really help us understand how is the person going to do in the classroom, particularly in the first year. That’s really all that I think that people get very, very fixated on it.”

Admissions officers are looking for candidates that will compliment the school’s culture. In other words, find your fit, that’s tip #3. “When I think of fit, I will put it in terms of corporate culture. For example, you can go to a top high tech firm, you can go to Microsoft, or you can go to Apple. Both are top echelon technology companies. At the same point in time the company culture in both of those firms can be very, very different and your experience with those firms is going to be very different and your satisfaction with those experiences can be very, very different. So similarly in business school you really want to choose a school that is an excellent fit for who you are and that’s going to have a lot of benefits. The first of course is that you’re going to learn and grow, and develop a lot more where there’s a good fit, where you feel comfortable, where you relate to the style of the school, where you relate to the students. So you’ll get much more out of the experience both personally and professionally. The second benefit of course is that if you’re in a place that makes sense, that fits with you, you obviously enjoy the experience a lot more. And the third benefit which is a huge benefit goes well beyond between two years is the network. You’re really investing a lot in the people of the school as well as the program. And if you go there and you’re not really connecting with your classmates, you’re not really connecting with the administration, the faculty; well you’re not going to connect any better over the course of your life when you’re trying to tap back into these groups as a network for life. So you really want to choose the people very, very carefully and I always tell people to choose almost the people and the fit first, and then look at some of the other factors second.”

Many applicants tend to think that they need to have the right GMAT score, GPA or work experience to get in. Some even think they can formulate the right combination or say the right thing to get accepted. That leads to tip #4: don’t try to gain the process. Jim Holeman is Director of Admissions at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, “There’s far more arts and science when makes an admissions decision. If making an admissions decision was as simple as plugging a GMAT score, a GPA, amount of work experience into some formula or algorithm, I probably wouldn’t have a job. When we’re putting together a class that is going to be diverse, it’s going to have representation from different work experiences, different academic backgrounds. Certainly because it’s a rigorous academic program, we want people who are going to be strong students but beyond that we’re looking for a group of people who are going to be able to learn from each other, to teach each other and that can’t be figured from a GMAT score or sometimes even from a GPA or an academic record. Looking at all the aspects of an application, or an applicant that makes them unique, makes them special. With that in mind, it’s like putting together a puzzle looking for different kinds of expertise, different kinds of experiences that makes the classroom environment far richer and everyone’s experience through the MBA program far better. So definitely it’s a more personal process than some might imagine.”

Gallogly says there’s no magic in the admissions process, “There’s no magic 8 Ball, there’s no scientific formula, there’s no magic equation. I mean people are very complicated, these decisions are very challenging and you know I think by the time people get to be the age of 27 or 28 which is sort of a typical age of going to business school, especially when you’re talking about people applying from all over the world with very different backgrounds. There is no way that you could plug things into some model and just have it pump out results because you’re really looking at how is the person going to do as a student and there’s very different facts that you would take into that account. Even reviewing someone’s undergraduate transcript you want to take a look at where did they go to school, how did they perform, what were their majors, what were their grade trends, what circumstances might have been surrounding that, were they working full-time while they were in undergraduate, did they transfer colleges, did they have a sick relative that they tend to, were they a varsity athlete and so even just looking at their undergraduate transcript is pretty subjective, pretty complicated and involves a lot of judgment. Plus if you start to go beyond that, did they take additional coursework, did they have a master’s degree, how did they do in those things, do they have certifications then how did they do in the GMAT, how was their split on their verbal versus their quantitative. Then when you’re looking at that, is English their native language, is it not their native language. So even just sort of talking about some of these you can see the amount of judgment and those are about things that are more concrete that have numbers. Then you get into things like work experience and the work experience is going to vary so much depending on again where they are in the world, what industry, what company, what projects are they given. Then you get to the recommendations and the essays and you start to get even more and more variations. So it is not a hard, scientific process. We often as a committee sit there and debate candidates, numbers of us reviewing their applications and really having deep discussions about what this person brings to the table and their advantages and their opportunities for improvement. It’s a very personal process, it’s a very holistic process, it’s done individual by individual. It takes a lot of years of training and expertise and the only way you do it is you read the applications, you think about the applications, you discuss the application and you make a lot of judgment decisions.”

In our multimedia tech enhanced world it’s easy to rely on websites or blogs or pods to choose a business school to apply. But it just doesn’t cut it. So tip #5 is visit schools. Again, Alex Chu, “I encourage most applicants if they can to go visit the schools because you’ll get so much more information just by seeing the school with your eyes and hearing what students have to say. It beats listening to me, it beats looking at websites, going on discussion boards, nothing beat experience. It’s one of those things if you’re going to be spending 300,000 to half a million to go to school it’s not a big investment to spend a weekend or to take some time off to visit some of these schools. The more you know about the school it will just naturally come through in how you write the why part of the school application whether the essay or the interview. It’s just the more you know about it the more natural it is to just almost writes itself. The more you know, the more you research, the more you know about this school, it will naturally come through in what you write about that school about why that school is important to you or why that school fits you. Yes it’s not something you have to try or something you have to spin, it just comes through naturally and especially in the interview process it’s not something where you have the script. You know it’s just that sincerity and that research comes through naturally.”

Business schools give students the opportunity to explore different careers but if you’re applying to business school you should already have a good idea of what that career will be. That’s tip #6: know what you want and why you want it, especially when writing your career goals essay. Esser Gallogly, “Business school is a place to get it done, not to figure it out. It’s very different that undergraduate. Undergraduate you have four years and that’s a lot of time to explore and self discover. Business school, at least Stern, it’s two years and your resume will be due as soon as you walk on campus, in fact we have some stuff that you will work on before they even arrive in terms of clarifying goals and working on their resume formats. The first company presentations happen in October, interviews for internships happen in January. That does not give you much time if anything for self reflection and introspection plus you’re getting to know 400 classmates, you’re taking your classes, there’s extracurriculars and there’s New York City. It’s not a time for self reflection and self discovery. If you’re not really pretty clear in what you want to go do, take the time to figure that out and then apply to business school. You’re not going to do yourself a favor. You know it’s a big investment and you want to maximize the return on the investment and the best way to do that is to have a clear goal as to what you want to be doing when you get out before you even apply. So to me, sure you’re not going to necessarily, I want to be at this company, in this office, working for this manager, at the same point in time you should have a pretty good sense of okay if I want to go do marketing, there’s a lot of people going into marketing, do I want to be in consumer package goods, do I want to be in pharmaceutical, do I want to be in luxury retail, and do I really know what a brand manager does at a L’Oreal. What have I done to see if the skills and attributes that I have match well with the requirements of that position? You know it’s the kind of work that I would be doing there is stuff that I would find fulfilling and satisfying, do I really understand what that’s about? Actually that level of research is entirely doable by people, they can for example go to mba.com, there are some career survey and self assessment tests that they have available there. I always tell people if you have a feeling about an industry, go research it on vault.com. Talk to people at your company who do that function, you know if you’re at a bank there’s usually someone in the marketing group. Talk to them about what they do. Your friends, relatives, do you have an undergraduate alumni network; this would be a great time to go out and do informational interviews. And further reach out to the schools. The schools, you know we have a great system where people can call or email or even visit graduate assistance from second year students who work in our office and they’ll be happy to talk with you about the different types of careers, what people do. They can put you in touch with the clubs, the professional clubs that are targeted such careers. I think these are the things that really, really help you.”

Admissions officers like to see your application as one complete story of who you are. Imagine a unifying thread that connects everything from your GMAT score, academic record, essays, recommendations and interview. So tip #7 is be consistent. Jim Holeman, “We want to make sure that people have given the MBA a lot of good thought and when they apply they have clear reasons for pursuing a MBA, clear reasons for the schools that they have chosen to apply to. So it’s interesting to us when we get an application and in the essays they talk about certain goals whether short term or long term and then all of the sudden they have a different set of goals and so having consistency throughout the process is a valuable thing.”

If you’re applying to a top business school you’re probably aware of the stakes, some of these accept as few as 10 percent of the applicant school and you would be thrilled, or would kill to be in that group of admits. Having that said Alex Chu says there are few things uglier than having to deal with someone desperate, eager to please and overly ingratiating. So that’s tip #8: don’t be desperate. “Especially with the kind of people who apply to business schools, you obviously they’ve gone through life wanting a certain degree or a lot of degree of control over what they’ve done and all that. I think it’s easy to get kind of neurotically obsessive about certain things. Especially about their weaknesses and what happens that ends of turning to desperation or spinelessness or they try to either over justify what they have done, or they become overly defensive, or they just try way too hard. It comes through in a very subtle way in the way you write your essays, the tone of your essays, and also the tone of your voice when you’re speaking to an ad com member in the interview process. The way to approach the application process is no different than trying to go for a job or the sales process for that matter. It’s about putting your best face on but not necessarily coming across as I actually need to have this. It’s just a matter of being the best version of yourself and letting the chips fall where they may.”

Applying in certain rounds can have certain benefits but it’s most beneficial if you submit your best application. That means applying when you’re ready, tip #9. Again, Jim Holeman, “I think that there’s a lot of myths out there about strategies in terms of application deadlines. My advice to candidates is always apply when you feel that your application is at its strongest. Certainly we do have some suggestions for those interested in merit based financial aid, we encourage them to meet one of our earlier deadlines because while we have seats in the class available through all the deadlines, our financial aid resources are a little bit more limited and they’ll have a better chance of financial aid consideration in the early deadline. International students are encouraged to meet earlier deadlines as well simply because of the additional time it takes to secure the student visa. You want to give them as much time to prepare for their move to the United States as possible. But that being said, I’d much rather see an application come in for a later deadline that’s strong than someone who rushed to meet an early deadline but are not satisfied with their essays or weren’t able to get the reference that they really wanted, don’t have the GMAT that they had hoped for. At the Kelley School we have had seats available in the class through all of the deadlines so if you’re a strong candidate there may still be room at the very end.”

Applying to a top business school is an arduous and stressful process. Putting forth your very best effort is all that you can really do. And our final tip is to remember the admissions officers are just people too. “I think that a lot of people like to think that ad com members are some part of a secret society where they have like this list of secrets that they go to, to determine whether an applicant gets in and the realty is admissions committee members are everyday people, the university administrators. A lot of the decision making when it comes to business school since it’s such a subjective process is made in a lot more than a casual made than I think most people would like to admit. They typically take around 15 to 45 minutes to look at an application and that can be anywhere from 30 to 50 pages. That includes your essays, your rec letters, the actual forms itself and so on and so forth. So they’re looking through that application pretty briskly and part of the reason why is that each ad com member has probably seen thousands and thousands of applications, they kind of have a good idea as to whether somebody could pass…..or not. And each admissions member has a lot of say in terms of their recommendations, there’s not sort of a set of guidelines that they absolutely have to adhere to. The guidelines are more or less basic rules of thumb that they should follow but it still comes down to whether the individual reader digs what you’re trying to say or not. Because of that it goes back to the whole concept of being yourself and being engaged and being sincere about who you are, what you’ve done and what you want both in the essays and the interviews because that is what people will remember.”

We hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of MBA Podcaster. For more information, advice and to register for your weekly MBA Podcast visit mbapodcaster.com. I’m Janet Nakano for MBA Podcaster. Be sure to listen next time on another topic to help you succeed in your MBA application process and life beyond. Thanks for joining us.

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MBA Podcaster is your online source for information, insight, and advice on the MBA admission process. We deliver relevant information and advice through biweekly audio segments for those planning to apply for a Master in Business Administration. Topics include everything from a behind-the-scenes view of the admission process to post-MBA job opportunities and current market trends. Guests include Deans of various business schools, alumni, corporate recruiters, MBA consultants and more. On each segment we go in-depth on a particular topic of interest to an MBA applicant and interview relevant experts to help make your application process more efficient and successful. Listen for this week’s newest topic or browse our archive for the specific information you need to know. Drop us a line and tell us what you’d like to hear: info@mbapodcaster.com